Digitus Impudicus: is flipping the bird illegal?

I recently read a federal appeals court ruling that says cops can't stop people for merely giving them the finger. That would make Roger Roots, author of Are Cops Constitutional, proud.

The case begins in May of 2006, when a man and his wife were visiting their daughter in Johnsonville, NY and came across a police cruiser running radar. Demonstrating his displeasure, John Swartz flipped-off the cop as the couple drove past.

Piqued by this insulting gesture, officer Richard Insogna took off after the offending motorists. Long story short, he arrested Mr. Swartz for disorderly conduct. While that charge was eventually dropped, there were several court appearances, legal expenses and inconveniences associated with the charges.

Swartz filed suit in district court seeking damages for illegal seizure, a disorderly conduct arrest and an alleged malicious prosecution, but his lawsuit was dismissed on grounds that cops are protected from civil actions based on qualified immunity.

But that's not the end of the story. On appeal, a federal judge wrote...

This ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity. Surely no passenger planning some wrongful conduct toward another occupant of an automobile would call attention to himself by giving the finger to a police officer. And if there might be an automobile passenger somewhere who will give the finger to a police officer as an ill-advised signal for help, it is far more consistent with all citizens’ protection against improper police apprehension to leave that highly unlikely signal without a response than to lend judicial approval to the stopping of every vehicle from which a passenger makes that gesture.

The whole decision is here.

The court partly used Digitus Impudicus: The Middle Finger and the Law by Ira Robbins, whose abstract is here.

God and politics

I don't look to religion to measure a candidate’s worthiness. I could get behind someone who proposes, supports and defends public policies that respect the well-being of the people – someone who respects Constitutional principles like freedom and liberty – without regard to their faithful viewpoint.

I trust no government, or candidate for an office thereto, to have a hand in the implementation of policy that would define or regulate my marriage. I believe in giving women and men control over their own reproductive systems, unencumbered by government’s meddling.

As a military man, I defend your right to form private or exclusive organizations that promote various ideologies among its members under the guise of some faith, so long as it doesn't impose restrictions or injury upon those who don’t share their worldview.

I've got my viewpoint. You've got yours. Can we agree that government is not an institution that could appreciate or care about either? I would prefer you help the rest of us keep government out of our way.

It’s very problematic for many thinking people to accept that there’s a prime mover that not only created the world in which we live, but all its inhabitants, and one who also knows us personally, cares about us, and is concerned with the positions in which we have sex, and have our genitals carved.

If the scripture to which you refer is truly divine, then one would hope it would have something more useful and advanced to say than, “Don’t touch dead pigs;” any educated person of the first century could have extolled such wisdom.

Ghost printing

My printer inexplicably generated a paper airline boarding pass bearing my name for a flight I didn't book. I immediately checked my bank account online for any charges that might be related to that purchase, but I found none. I called the police, the airline and my bank to investigate this potential fraud. I had all working feverishly on this most alarming matter.



Long story short: the email address associated with my HP printer's ePrint account is apparently similar to that of another person sharing my name, who evidently inadvertently gave the airline my ePrint email address. United then emailed his boarding pass to the address given, which was then received and processed by my printer, handily, albeit mysteriously, producing a paper boarding pass that landed on the printer receiving tray.

Longer version.

I called United Airlines. After sitting in a queue for nearly 40 minutes and after ascertaining identifying information from me, they confirmed that the person who booked the flight was not me, and that the boarding pass was sent to me by mistake and therefore didn't indicate fraud. They couldn't explain how my printer was involved, which still had me quite concerned.

I called my bank. Not knowing amount or date of a transaction, my bank was not able to immediately find any record of a transaction that might be attributed to the purchase of an airline ticket under my name, fraudulently or otherwise.

I then turned to my printer setup pages. as I discovered there is an "ePrint" feature which sends documents to my printer via email. The email address associated with my ePrint service bears my name. I had forgotten I set this up this account and feature when I installed the printer.

It is now conceivable to me that another person with my name also owns this style printer and the ability to send documents to it. It is plausible that the email address associated with his ePrint service is similar to mine. In fact, on inspection, my ePrint log revealed that an email bearing the subject "Boarding pass for confirmation xxxxxx" was sent from unitedairlines@united.com to my printer around the time the boarding pass began printing.

I have since restricted received ePrint emails to reject all but those addresses I have supplied. There will be no more mysterious boarding passes landing in my receiving tray unless a hacker manages to make that happen.